Give or Take a Thousand Years
by Tirielle
Summary: In which Kagome travels back 500 years to the 2500's, and proceeds to have adventures. A science-fiction style AU.
1. Prologue: The Future

Prologue: In which Kagome touches something she shouldn't have.

"Psst… Kagome…" Someone was talking to her. They were trying to whisper, really, and it was only slightly less audible than the teacher droning in the background. She would normally be listening, but it was humid and her uniform was warm and the teacher had such a _relaxing_ voice.

Kagome ignored the voice and turned away. It was too early in the afternoon to wake up.

"_Kagome,_" the voice hissed. There may have been giggling in the background, too.

"Mrmmhmrmm," was the incredibly coherent reply. She was sleeping. She didn't have to make sense.

"You asked for this," whispered Eri. And promptly elbowed her in the stomache. Hard.

"Gack!" Kagome jerked upright, arms flailing, and looked around. The rest of her class was collecting their bags (Hojo), staring at her blankly (Ayumi), or snickering at her (Eri).

She groaned and hid her face in her hands.

* * *

"I can't believe you fell asleep in class, Kagome!" Yuka giggled at her on their way home from school. "I thought you liked history. Doesn't your grandpa run a museum?"

Kagome rolled her eyes. "Yeah, for the lost years. It's more of a tourist trap, really. He claims to have relics from the ships and everything. Even parts of the _Shikon_, at some point, until he sold them to a collector."

"Speaking of which," Ayumi beamed at them, "City hall has that really cool speech thing—"

"There's a political thing today, right? You want us to spend free time on _politics?_" Eri stared at her, incredulous.

"Hey!" she defended. "There's nothing wrong with politics. And anyways, it'll be cool! They're unveiling that _Shikon _replica, and it's going to have a real, whatchamacallit, conviction core? Like the original supposedly had"

Eri froze. "A self-aware confliction power core? A _jewel _core? But that's not—those aren't supposed to—you mean the—" She wheeled around to Kagome and Yuka. "We're going. We're going, right? You don't mind if we go. You'd love to go. We're going."

* * *

"…_almost five hundred years since the end of the lost years and the downfall of the Naraku Corporation. We are gathered here in the Citadel of Earth…"_

"There's a lot more people here than I thought there'd be," Kagome whispered to Ayumi. The entire square was packed, and they'd had to stand on the stairs just to be able to see. The air was filled with a veritable swarm of news cameras from different stations, most of which she'd never even heard of.

"…_to many people, planets, and even galaxies, the _Shikon_ is a symbol, a legend of a time of heroes…"_

"Of course there is," she replied. "Politics are important, you know, and this whole event is supposed to be a celebration of peace and understanding and history. Just because we live in the unofficial centre of the local galaxy doesn't mean we should take stuff like this for granted. We get to watch history in the making on our way home from school. I mean, I heard that some people even time-gated here. _That's _how important this is."

"…_This would not, of course, be possible without the help of many. The House of the Northern Star and it's affiliated companies…"_

Kagome winced. Time-travelling was notoriously uncomfortable. "Okay, I get it, politics make the planets go around, we're lucky people, and— is that _gramps?_" Kagome stared. Standing beside the ship was an incredibly familiar looking old man, and she could swear that he was her grandfather. But that didn't make sense, her grandfather was just a museum curator, and not a very good one at that. Did he ever say if he had a twin?

"…_to the Higurashi Museum of Vanished History, which provided parts of the original core, and helped to make this all possible…"_

Kagome blinked. No way. Eri turned to her, eyes wide. "You have _got _to get me on that ship."

* * *

"Grandpa!"

The oldest member of the Higurashi household looked up. There were only two people in the known universe who called him that, and one of them had stayed home today with the flu.

"Ah, Kagome! I didn't expect to see you here today, it's not your usual sort of event. I'm glad you're starting to realize the importance of history!"

She rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "Ayumi wanted to come, and Eri did too once she heard about the ship. Speaking of which, can we…?"

"You'll have to ask the captain," he told her, gesturing to a long-haired man in a suit. "Sesshomaru is here as a representative of the House of the Western Star, who were the ones responsible for the engineering and blueprints. As you should know, because you listened very closely to the very important speech, right?" He ticked an eyebrow at her.

"Right…" she agreed, avoiding his eyes and casting about for a topic change. "His name is Sesshomaru? Doesn't that mean something about killing?"

"It's traditional," a smooth baritone informed her from behind her, making her whirl around. "A distant ancestor of mine, known for being ruthless. I've been told that I don't live up to the reputation." He smiled, his golden eyes sparkling with amusement, and Yuka sighed quietly with longing. "On the other hand, I'm said to have inherited his talents for captaincy. You said you'd like to see the ship?"

"Yes," Eri nodded at him.

"Please," added Yuka, batting her eyelashes.

Sesshomaru chuckled, and led them on board. The ship gleamed in the way that only ships fresh from the techs could, and smelled slightly of synthetic leather and silk. The walls were decorated with the occasional art piece—an ink painting from Eastern Earth, a holograph imported from Andromeda, a sculpture of a creature that was either abstract or extinct. Kagome glimpsed something glittering through an open doorway, and stopped to look.

"That's got to be the time gate," whispered Yuka, noticing her gaze.

"Mmhm," confirmed Sesshomaru, doubling back to gently close the door. "Time-travel is terribly energy-intensive, and rather painful too. I wish I didn't have to resort to it."

"Then why'd you do it?" asked Yuka, curious.

"Well, I actually was on a business trip several systems away when my father called me to mention my 'wonderful comportment at such an important public event'. In fact, he should be making the call in around an hour." He paused for a moment, allowing them to sort through his sentance. "I thought it would be a good idea to, well, not cause a paradox."

"Oh! I get it! You weren't here in the first place, but since someone told you that you _were,_ then you travelled back so that you would be, so they saw that you were, so they told you you would be, and you know that they will because they already did." Yuka nodded to herself. " 'cause otherwise, you might make the universe explode, or something."

"Or something," he agreed, deciding to pretend he understood her clarification. "We're still not sure what changing the timeline on purpose would do, but it looks like the damage would increase with the energy involved and the time difference. With the jewel core involved, it was just a stupid risk to take."

Eri thought of the power that the legendary core was supposed to contain, and gulped.

* * *

"This, ladies, is the bridge," said Sesshomaru. "State-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, pure, efficient, beauty."

Kagome had to agree with him. If she managed to get into the captaincy program, then _this_ was what she wanted her ship to look like. Workstations and control panels sat beneath large windows, with the faint flickering that indicated both protective shielding and three-dimensional interfacing. A really, _really_ comfortable looking chair—it had to belong to the captain—sat overlooking it all, a foldable desk beside it scattered with the contents of an open folder. The hum of computers gently filled the background. But most importantly, set in a corner and tucked out of the way, was an antique coffee maker. She was in _love_.

Eri was falling in love too, but for a different reason. On the opposite corner of the semicircular bridge, suspended in a tangle of wires, was a really pretty marble. At least, that was what it looked like. To the scientifically up-to-date and the esoteric studiers of legends, however, it was recognizable as something else—the legendary 'Shikon Jewel', or at least a very convincing replica of it. One of the only recurring themes of all the legends of the lost years, and something that scientists had spent centuries attempting to replicate after the original had supposedly vanished.

"It's beautiful," she murmured, grabbing the closest available person—Kagome—and dragging them over to take a look.

"I know," agreed Kagome. "That coffee maker is a perfectly automatic replica of—that has to be like, eighteenth century."

"I don't care about your fake thirteen-hundred year old relic. The jewel is right here. I'm looking at the _Shikon Jewel_, Kagome. You don't get it! I'm close enough to reach out and touch it!" Eri reached out to prove her point, cradling it gently in one cupped palm.

"Eri, don't!" she protested. "We're only here because Sesshomaru's a really nice person, and we really shouldn't go around touching one-of-a-kind, gazillion-dollar tech. No matter how sparkly it is." Kagome carefully pulled Eri's hand away, and pushed the incredibly powerful, tiny power core back into its nest of wires.

And then her world broke.

* * *

The moment her hand touched the power core, she could've sworn that it recognized her. It was warm—it would be strange if it wasn't, with all the power running through it—but it had _pulsed_ when she touched it, as if saying hello. And then the bridge around her had faded, everything but the jewel disappearing like some sort of hallucination as the world faded to the purest possible shade of cerulean blue.

And there was pain. It felt like her body was dissolving, every single cell ripped away and cast into a tornado. It hurt terribly, worse than breaking her bones, worse than breathing evaporated acid up her nose, and that had nearly _melted_ bone before Eri had gotten the teacher. Eri. She hoped her friends were okay, seeing as she herself was stuck in a blue void and hurting worse than childbirth with a trembling pink marble of solidified energy.

Wait. Trembling? She looked closer, unconsciously floating off the ground (that didn't exist anymore anyways) and curling her body toward the jewel. It didn't look perfectly round anymore, but instead was riddled with tiny cracks and imperfections. She reached out with her other hand, and the jewel cracked ominously in half. And then it shattered, the shards flying away to be swallowed by her mysterious blue surroundings. Some must've found their way into her, too, because she suddenly hurt even _worse_, and so she gave up on thinking and passed out.

* * *

A/N- So this story is an experiment, possibly doomed to failure, and written because of a "what if" that _wouldn't go away._


	2. Chapter 1

In which people are confused.

Kagome opened her eyes to a white room, empty except for a door and a guy and a _lot_ of wires. They were attached to the young man's skin, branching behind where he was suspended against the wall to connect to the floor and the ceiling.

She flicked her eyescreen displays on with a twitch of her pinky and thumb, her eyes focusing on something that only she could see. Time and date weren't showing up properly, so she probably wasn't connected to the Matrix, wherever the weird blue light had sent her. And without it and her account to draw information from, all that was showing up were her stats, which really weren't helping. Of _course_ her heart rate was elevated. She was trying not to panic. And yes, she knew that her pain recepters were active. Thankfully, her nanos were working on that—apparently, there was no actual physical damage.

She pushed the translucent screens away with another gesture, and walked closer to the stranger with a small groan, her curiosity overcoming her lingering pain. His hair was a pure, snowy white, he had puppy dog ears, and she could see a hint of fangs peeking over his lower lip. She leaned closer, and hit her nose as a barrier crackled harshly into existence.

Somewhere behind her, an alarm began to blare.

"No no no no..."Panicked, Kagome punched at the barrier—and to her surprise, it shattered. The man's eyes snapped open, and she realized that he bore a striking resemblance to Sesshomaru. But Sesshomaru hadn't glared at her like that.

" Changed your mind, _Kikyo?_"

"I, er…um, what?"

"I thought you said you'd leave me here forever." His hand flickered to the side, claws shredding the wires that still restrained him. "I thought I _deserved it_."

"Look," Kagome raised her hands in front of her. "My name is Kagome, I have no idea where I am, and I think I set something off."

He looked at her dubiously and sniffed the air, before apparently judging that she wasn't a threat. "No, duh."

Arrogant jerk.

White, fluffy ears flicked pointedly at her. "I can hear footsteps, by the way."

She gulped. "So if I don't want to be here and you don't want to be here, can't we just agree to not-be-here together?"

He ignored her, but didn't exactly say no, so when he kicked open the door and started running down the hallway, she followed him. "So where are we going?" she asked between panting breaths.

He looked contemptuously at her as he punched a security guard in the gut. "_I'm _leaving. I don't care what you do."

* * *

Kaede was old. She could feel it in the way her bones groaned when she got up in the mornings, and the way that staying awake just seemed to take so much more energy than it used to. But Edo was her home, where she was the official medic and unofficial grandmother of an entire outpost. There was no way she was leaving them for such a silly reason as being old.

Especially since the rest of them couldn't leave at all.

It wasn't like they were prisoners, _technically_.

It's just that there was nothing out there for them. Edo used to be powerful and strong, one of the most important outposts of the West's empire. But after The Incident, it was shunted aside. The people who worked here now were people with no future—people past their prime, the terminally ill, the no-longer useful, and even the occasional corporate spy who knew too much. But the House of the Western Star was apparently noble and forgiving, and even let them keep their jobs. And free health care. And lives. They were, however, blacklisted from every job that the West could influence.

And that was a long list.

So they resigned themselves to living their lives quietly on the peaceful planet of Earth. The mission of their outpost was simply to watch over Inuyasha. And if felt like it, try to wake him up. Sesshomaru, apparently, did not care. And they had been doing just that until the alarms started blaring.

She was too old to deal with this.

"Look," she said, rubbing at her temples. "Can you just _please_ tell me what's going on?"

The leader of their outpost—his name was Hojo—looked sheepish. She wondered if it was a bad sign that their leader was scared of an old woman, but dismissed the thought. Everyone was, to an extent, scared of their grandmother.

"Inuyasha's awake."

Kaede blinked in shock. "That's good, but that doesn't really explain why the alarms are going off and our guards keep falling unconscious." She gestured at a monitor behind her, beeping with the gentle noise of heart rates.

"We… weren't exactly the ones who woke him up. According to the security feeds, a girl appeared out of nowhere in his room, broke the barrier, woke him up, and then he ripped off the wires and ran. It seems he's heading towards the hangar."

That was good, but he was avoiding her eyes. "You're not telling me something."

"Kaede, the girl, she… She looked like Kikyo." He looked down—he had no right to hide something like that from her. "Kaede?"

But Kaede was gone.

* * *

It would be forever a mystery how a 60-year-old woman reached them before security reinforcements could, but there she was, standing in the way of what Kagome assumed was the hangar.

"I can't let you pass," she told him, voice firm. A commander's voice, or a teacher's.

"You can't stop me, old lady. I'll go through you if I have to." He cracked of his knuckles.

"Lots of things are different now, Inuyasha. You've been asleep for a long time. Do you really think you could survive out there now like you used to?"

So that was his name.

"I'd ask how you know who I am," he frowned, "but I've got the feeling you're one of the ones who was keeping me locked up here in the first place."

"That was Kikyo," she said softly. Her eyes flickered to Kagome. "And apparently, it was Kikyo who woke you up."

"My name is _not_ Kikyo," Kagome insisted. "Why do people keep calling me that?"

"Because you look exactly like her and opened a field keyed to her energy signature and an artefact that she literally took to the grave with her?"

Well, that would do it.

"I—well—I don't know how I got here, I don't know what happened, I don't care about this Kikyo person and I sure as hell don't want to stay here." She took a deep breath. "We're _leaving_." She glanced at what she had fondly started to think of as her back-up.

Her back-up sneered at her. "_I'm_ leaving, but I'm not taking you with me."

And, well, wasn't that just great, Kagome thought as she watched what she had thought was her only ally turn on her, stalking towards her menacingly. She could register Kaede in the background _(If you really have the Jewel, girl, then use it already!)_ and she really had _no freaking clue_ how to do that, (_You just have to want it to work!_) so she just stuck her hands out in front of her like the most cliché tv show she ever watched and her eyes zeroed onto the ears on top of his head, flicking back and forth in a way that was the opposite of menacing. She yelled the first thing that came to her mind.

"SIT!"

He crashed conveniently to the floor. Kagome breathed a sigh of relief, except she was still trapped in a hostile compound (although that might've had something to do with dog-boy's violence). Everyone was paying more attention to him—Inuyasha, she reminded herself—than to her, though, so maybe she could sneak off while they were distracted.

"… comatose for fifty years, Inuyasha. It's 2532 earth-time now."

Or maybe not, she decided, as she felt herself fall to the ground in a faint.

* * *

When she recovered conciousness, Kaede and the guards were gone. Instead, she found herself blinking blearily up at a soothingly pale blue ceiling, accompanied with a slight tang of disinfectant. There was a small red-headed child sitting on a stool next to her bed, fiddling with a screwdriver and a knot of circuitry and twisted metal. He noticed that she was awake, and beamed at her.

"Good morning!"

His happiness was infectious, and she smiled back at him. "Good morning."

"Granny said that you popped out of nowhere yesterday, but nobody knows who you are, even if you look like that crazy lady who killed herself, and you were alone but nobody should be alone so I was camping out here so that I'd be here when you woke up!" And then he breathed. "I'm Shippo, by the way."

Kagome reached out to ruffle his hair. "That's, er, very thoughtful of you, Shippo—thanks. My name's Kagome, and it's nice to meet you. Can you tell me what date it is?"

"It's March 4. You've been asleep for daaayys."

"Shippo, can you tell me the year?"

"It's still 2532. You haven't been asleep for _that_ long, even if Granny was all super-worried about you. You're fine! I mean, er, you _are_ fine, right? Because Granny's a really awesome doctor, and if you're hurt or sick or achey or anything I can go get her." He stared at her with wide, concerned eyes.

"I'm fine, don't worry about it." He beamed at her again. "But won't someone be worried about _you_, if you've been here for so long?"

"It's okay! Granny Kaede's office is right there!" He pointed at a door somewhere to his right, shifting enough in his seat for a bushy tail to pop into view. He noticed her looking, and 'eep'ed.

Kagome squealed, plucked him off his seat, and proceeded to snuggle him. Something in the back of her mind told her that she shouldn't traumatize strangers, but Shippo didn't seem to be resisting so she ignored it.

"You're… so… cute!"

"You're not afraid of me?" His voice was quiet and timid, and only made her want to hug him harder.

"Why would I be?"

His voice turned slightly bitter. " 'Cause I'm a dirty stinkin' demon, that's why."

It was clearly something he'd heard someone else say. She rubbed his back gently. "And they're racist pigs, Shippo. Just because you're not human,"she said, taking a moment to pet his tail gently, "doesn't mean you're a demon. And you're one of the most wonderful kids I've ever met."

"You met me ten minutes ago." He was looking at her with a sort of desperate hope that made her want to hunt down whoever had said that to him and strangle them.

"And I can already tell what a good kid you are. You must be awesome!"

He giggled quietly into her arms, before backing out somewhat reluctantly. "Enough with the mushy stuff, Kagome. I should tell Kaede that you're awake."

* * *

Kagome examined Kaede carefully. The woman seemed harmless enough—probably around sixty years old, and just past her prime. Her white hair was pulled up in a bun, and a little bit was left loose to hang in front of an eyepatch. Scarred hands folded into lab coat pockets spoke of either dangerous research or field work. But her kind face gave off an air of serenity that reminded Kagome of her grandpa tending his artefacts. She felt like what Kagome had always imagined a grandmother would feel like.

Kaede was likewise studying Kagome. She tried not to concentrate too much on her face, which was eerily familiar and brought back uncomfortable memories. The girl-child was wearing some sort of uniform, with what appeared to be a school crest emblazoned on her chest. Her hair was long and unbound, like Kaede could never convince Kikyo to keep it. And her palms were covered with a violent-looking set of scars, as if something had exploded on them.

Kaede liked her. But the girl didn't need to know that.

"So," she started, breaking the silence, "What brought you here, and into Inuyasha's room on top of that?"

"Where exactly is here, again?" Kagome asked.

"You're in Edo, Earth's orbit, Solar System, Milky Way… do I have to continue?"

"..." Kagome buried her face in her hands. "No, I know _exactly_ where earth is. And it's still 2532, earth-sun?"

"Well, yes," replied Kaede. "Why do you ask?"

"Before I blacked out and woke up in Inuyasha's room, it was 3029."

"Hm. That _is_ rather concerning." And mostly impossible, but who knew what would happen 500 years in the future? "I can see why you fainted in the hallway, then. Do you know how you got here?"

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

"I'm withholding judgement for now. You did, after all, mysteriously appear in a rather heavily guarded facility, and open a containment field that was theoretically going to remain locked forever. My sister was a bit of a genius for that sort of thing, after all. I think time travel isn't _that_ far fetched."

"Let me guess—your sister's name was Kikyo?"

Kaede fished a photo out of her lab coat pocket, and handed it to Kagome. A young woman looked out at her, her face unsmiling and her hands smudged with ink from a pile of diagrams and calculations. The person in the picture could've been her twin. She photographed it with an unnoticed flick of her ring finger and flipped it over—_Kikyo, Project Shikon, December 2581 _was scribbled on the back.

"Project Shikon?" Kagome asked, curious.

Kagome sighed and settled into her chair more comfortably. "I guess it's common knowledge, around here at least. If you don't hear it from me, you'll hear it from someone else.

"Kikyo was my older sister. A genius, everyone said. She was offered a job as a researcher for the House of the West before she even graduated high school, and she took it and started working here in Edo. She met Inuyasha here—he was in some sort of exile as a bastard son. They fell in love, eventually. I grew up here with Kikyo as a mother and Inuyasha as a sort of older brother.

The Shikon Project was… Kikyo said that she'd discovered something that could grant wishes. I never knew if it was a metaphor or something more literal, but she locked herself in her lab for hours. She said she could fix _everything_, and she'd have this crazy gleam in her eye. And Inuyasha took care of her and made sure she ate and slept, but I could tell he was interested in the project too. Everyone was.

And then The Incident happened. One day, Kikyo just… snapped, I guess. We think she drugged the compound—how else would nobody notice when she lit her lab on fire? She destroyed everything from the project, including a prototype, and killed herself. We thought she killed Inuyasha, too, but we found him a few days later in one of the underground test labs. We tried to wake him up, but nothing worked. Until you showed up, of course.

Now, what's your side of the story?"

"There's not much to tell," Kagome told her honestly. "I was at an event with my friends, we went on a replica of a famous ship—called the _Shikon_, by the way—and there Eri touched the power core. I tried to put it back, but when I touched it, I ended up here. 500 years away from where I'm supposed to be. I don't even know what happened."

Kaede frowned. "This power core wasn't small, pink, and shatterable, was it?"

Kagome gulped. "It was. Why?"

Kaede folded her hands in her lap. "Starting around 10 earth-sun years ago, I think, there've been rumours of a strange new substance. Nobody knows where it came from, and it only ever appears in shards. When I heard that it granted wishes, I thought of the Shikon Jewel, of course, but I dismissed it. They were only rumours, after all, and the Jewel was destroyed, hopefully to never be rediscovered. Your story, of course, changes things." She hesitated for a moment. "And if it took the whole jewel to bring you here, if you want to go home, then…"

"I'll probably need the whole thing to go back," finished Kagome miserably.

Kaede nodded. "If you ever want to see your home again, you'll need to get that power core. And I'm afraid that the power to grant wishes isn't something most people will give up if you ask nicely."

* * *

One minor breakdown and some very therapeutic yelling and running later, Kagome kicked her legs up onto the common room couch and started to plan.

Option one was to adapt to her new time and resign herself to never going home.

Option two was to travel the universe on what would probably become a criminal expedition to gain back all the shards of the power core, and try to go home.

Option one involved heartbreak. Option two involved, well, impossibility. It would be so much easier to just stay, and give up.

But she'd never really been the giving-up sort of person.

Not to mention, there was a sense of nagging responsibility for bringing the thing five hundred years into the past in the first place. She couldn't remember much about the lost years, but it had been a time of heroes. Heroes that only existed because there were villains for them to fight.

Option two it was.

* * *

A/N- I'm actually borrowing some technology from the Uglies/Pretties/Specials/Extras series. Mainly the eyescreens and nanos.


End file.
